1. Their model is broken. New Labour embraced the gung-ho capitalism of the 1990s and early 21st century – neo-liberalism. It crashed and burned in 2008, leaving the theory that you could just tax the financial services lightly to fund better public services in ruins. No Blairite has come up with anything worthwhile to say about what […]
Posts Tagged ‘Blairites’
Ed: this reshuffle could be your last chance
Oct 6th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Ed. Please listen. This is a matter of life and death. Your life and death, in fact, as Leader of the party. You had a bad conference. Not “a grotesque, cataclysm” of a conference, as Dan Hodges howled and many of your shadow cabinet whispered. But a conference in which your actions, in spite of […]
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Labour’s Party-within-a-party: latest funding figures
Sep 6th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Progress, Labour’s Blairite party-within-a-party, has now raised over £2.8million to fund its activities. Its annual income is now well in excess of the maximum ever achieved by the Militant tendency (which raised £283,818 in 1986 according to its published fighting fund totals) and it doesn’t finance the production of a weekly newspaper. Although it is understood that Ed […]
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Just deserts for Labour in Parliament
Jun 24th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.So Labour MPs stand to lose their vote for the Shadow Cabinet. Just deserts, you might say, for over a decade of failing to hold their leadership, the executive, to account. Its harsh on the new intake, who have been more independent of thought though even their assertiveness has been blunted by Ed’s aggressive promotion […]
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A boost for the hard right of the party
Jun 19th, 2011 by Owen Jones.“Men make their own history,” wrote Karl Marx back in 1852, “but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” Marx was a wise bloke, and was in this case talking about the admittedly pretty turbulent […]
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The Left must back Ed, warts and all
Jun 14th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Ed’s speech was carefully measured. A re-statement of the post-war justification for the creation of the welfare state — a social responsibility we all share. Those who saw this as an attack on benefit claimants must be basing their view on the spin and interpretation of the speech rather than the speech itself. And those […]
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The Kamikaze Blairites
Jun 12th, 2011 by Darrell Goodliffe.‘Memogate’ should rock this Party, but not for the reasons that the Daily Telegraph intend. The leadership, desperate to preserve the appearance of unity and semblance of order, has pointed the finger at the Conservatives but I remain deeply unconvinced this is the case. It has coincided with the leak of David Miliband’s now infamous ‘victory speech’ that never was — […]
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Will Ed hand the party back to the ÜberBlairites?
May 25th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.It’s eight months since Ed Miliband was elected promising change. Eight months that have seen more promise but precious little change. The party was promised a new voice, and maybe it will still be allowed a little one, but Liam Byrne’s policy review looks set to resurrect much of the old Blairite mantra before that voice […]
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The Blairite ultras would lead Labour to surrender. They must be stopped
May 19th, 2011 by Owen Jones.I never thought I’d say but it but, Christ, I don’t half know how Thatcher felt. Until her administration came and put the ‘Great’ back into ‘Great Britain’ (and all that), post-war Britain was a picture of despair for Maggie. The Tories had capitulated to the political settlement established by Clement Attlee’s 1945 government, with […]
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The Tories: fear them, hate them by all means, but be in awe of their genius
May 6th, 2011 by Owen Jones.For many Labour supporters who woke up this morning, this is what ‘schadenfreude’ was introduced into the lexicon for. The smell of toast Lib Dem wafted through their windows up and down the country. In the year since Britain fell back under Tory domination, the most passionate vitriol has been reserved for the Lib Dems: […]
